Centre Acanthes 1993: fresh in from a year in Denmark studying composition with Vikings Per Nørgaard, Karl Aage Rasmussen and Hans Abrahamsen, I found myself in the south of France just outside Avignon during the summer festival period at the academy created by Claude Samuel in 1977. Percussionist Sylvio Gualda and three composers were invited to give workshops: Harrison Birtwistle, who walked in the first day of his workshop carrying a huge plant he had uprooted somewhere in the woods daring us to name it… no one could; the ex-spectralist (as he described himself) Gérard Grisey, who would gently berate me for, among other things, being a ‘compositeur prolifique” – I had to confirm what that meant in French because I was surprised to be [...]

Actually, I’ve ‘transcribed’ the name of the video you should find below from Nobody Cares About Your Photography to Nobody Cares If You Listen. You could also transcribe it to nobody cares about your art. I’ll explain. I take pictures. I would like to take better pictures, so I subscribe to a very informative podcast called The Art of Photography. Ted Forbes has been doing this for a long time and I enjoy his delivery, and the subject matter is a nice mix of repertoire/history, theory, practice and even the ‘business of’. He recently published this short video - slightly off topic, and not. Anyone involved in the creative act might find his words echo a certain sentiment that concerns us [...]